Australia Bans Foreign-Matched Lotteries and Online Keno From January 2027

Four Northern Territory-licensed businesses sell Australians entries into US Powerball and EuroMillions draws. From 1 January 2027 they cannot, and online keno goes with them. The Lottery Corporation, which backs the change, has put the cost of losing its own online keno business at A$25 million of annual earnings.

• Foreign-matched lottery services and online keno will be prohibited in Australia from 1 January 2027 under the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Act 2026
• Foreign-matched lotteries let Australian customers buy into draws conducted overseas, including US Powerball and EuroMillions, and four businesses provide them under Northern Territory licences
• The Lottery Office, one of those four, has challenged the change and questioned whether it will reduce gambling harm
• Keno offered through licensed physical venues is unaffected, so pubs and clubs keep the product while its online form ends
• The measures sit inside the same package that banned wagering advertising in live sport and funds a national advertising opt-out register

Two Products Removed From the Market, One of Them Profitably

Australia will prohibit foreign-matched lottery services and online keno from 1 January 2027, under the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Act 2026 that cleared parliament on 19 August. The two prohibitions sit inside the broader reform package alongside the advertising restrictions and the continued development of BetStop, the national self-exclusion scheme.

Foreign-matched lotteries are the less familiar of the two. They allow Australian customers to buy an entry matched to a draw conducted overseas, including US Powerball and EuroMillions, without the operator being the lottery itself. Four businesses currently provide the service under licences issued in the Northern Territory. The Lottery Office, one of them, has challenged the change and questioned whether removing foreign-matched lotteries will reduce gambling harm or give consumers any meaningful protection. It will continue offering the service until the restrictions begin.

The Lottery Corporation, Australia's largest lottery company, has welcomed the legislation. Chief executive Wayne Pickup framed the case around what a licence obliges an operator to do. "Australia's lottery market is regulated by design to protect consumers, to safeguard integrity and to return money to the community. A licensed lottery operator carries real obligations: responsible gaming, security, auditing, probity, guaranteed prize funding and public returns. That is the price of a license, and it is why people trust a lottery ticket."

The company is not exempt from the cost. The legislation also removes online keno, and Pickup estimated that ending its own online keno operation would reduce annual earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation by about A$25 million, or roughly $18 million, based on the 2026 financial year. "The full year impact of discontinuing online Keno for us would be circa AU$25 million (US$18 million) of EBITDA based on FY26," he said.

Keno offered through licensed physical venues is untouched, which leaves pubs and clubs free to keep selling it. Pickup said the company's response would be to "double down on Keno in licensed venues", citing longstanding relationships across what he called the eastern seaboard pub and club ecosystem.

The Incumbent Backing a Ban That Costs It A$25 Million Is Doing Arithmetic, Not Charity

The Lottery Corporation supports a package that removes one of its own products and the offshore-matched competitors that undercut it on the same shelf. The keno line is a known, quantified A$25 million. The value of ending foreign-matched lotteries is unquantified and potentially larger, because those services compete for the same discretionary spend without carrying the licence conditions, prize guarantees or public returns that the domestic operator does. Backing both halves of the package is the cheaper trade, and Pickup's framing, that obligations are the price of a licence, is also an argument that competitors without those obligations should not be on the shelf.

The Lottery Office's Objection Is the One the Government Has Not Answered

The challenge is not that the products are harmless, but that banning them does not obviously reduce harm. A consumer who wants a Powerball entry after January 2027 has an offshore internet and no domestic legal route, which is the classic channelisation objection and the one a paper published this month argues Australian policy keeps failing to answer. The counter-argument is real too: a foreign-matched entry is not a lottery ticket, the customer holds a bet on a draw rather than a stake in it, and prize funding rests on the operator's balance sheet. That is a consumer protection case, and the government would be on firmer ground making it explicitly.

Venue Keno Survives Because the Venues Vote

The cleanest read of the online keno ban is that the product itself was never the target. Keno remains legal, purchasable and promoted in pubs and clubs across Australia; only the version you can play alone on a phone at three in the morning disappears. That is a defensible distinction on harm grounds, and it is also the distinction that costs the smallest number of jobs and upsets the fewest constituencies. Reform packages that survive contact with parliament usually contain one of these, and it is worth naming when they do.

Australia has removed two products and kept the third-party infrastructure of the largest one intact. The test, as ever, is whether the demand goes away with them.